


Counting Backward

by suitesamba



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, M/M, character death (not J/S)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-29
Updated: 2013-04-29
Packaged: 2017-12-09 22:16:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/778589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The key to 221B had been in his wallet for eight years and John finally uses it again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counting Backward

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** Not mine. Just playing. No profit is being made from this amateur work.
> 
> **A/N** : I am going to write something long _one_ day. But it is not _this_ day...

How long had it been? Five years? Six?

John should have remembered. Nearly two years had passed between Sherlock’s death and his resurrection, another two before the ultimatum. Mary had had enough of it – enough of London, of Sherlock, of guns, of murderers, or pacing the floor, worried sick, waiting for John to come home. They’d found a quiet cottage in the country close to Mary’s mother, a new clinic in Oxford. He said he didn’t mind the long commute to work three days a week. He said he was looking forward to a quiet life together.

Three years until she was suddenly…gone.

A year since.

He hadn’t seen Sherlock since the funeral, and then only in a vague, blurry-edged, numb sort of way. Sherlock standing under a black umbrella between Mycroft and Mrs. Hudson in the churchyard. Tall and thin and pale and serious. There had been such a press of people, such a crowd of mourners - _so sorry…so young…so sudden…such a tragedy._

It was such a small thing, such a ridiculous thing – a single bee sting. Anaphylactic shock. Mary dead in the garden amongst her roses when he came home from the clinic.

Mary’s mother had helped write the notes for the flowers and the donations. He had signed his name, just above hers, in his close, compact writing, awash in a shell-shocked sort of disbelief.

A year was twelve months, fifty-two weeks, three hundred and sixty-five days of slow realization that country life was restful and tolerable with Mary but tedious and boring alone.

The nights were too dark, too quiet to sleep.

Four years was a lifetime away from London.

Eight years away from 221B and he still had a key.

Sherlock had refused it. Had said he may need it again – one day.

The key was in his wallet, tucked inside the zippered coin pocket. Mary never knew he’d kept it.

He lifted his mobile and slid his thumb across it. Tapped his finger. Looked at the message again.

_Mrs. Hudson is raising the rent and I’m still without a flat mate._

John hadn’t wanted to leave London – hadn’t wanted to leave Sherlock – but he supposed he must have wanted a life with Mary more. _Evidence_ pointed to it. He’d wanted her to be happy, had determined to be happy with her. He’d fallen hard for her, fought hard for her, more than a year after watching Sherlock fall, and had finally won her heart on the very eve of Sherlock’s resurrection.

Mary was the sun’s setting. Peaceful reds and blues in a darkening sky. The quiet blanket of evening. Restful sleep. Introspection.

London – London was Sherlock – was the sun’s rising. Alert wakefulness. Blinking sleep from his eyes with a strong cup of tea, a quick ninety-degree turn, the thrill of the chase, a hundred thousand breaths of life. Awareness of other, part and parcel to a complex, intricate web of glorious intrigue.

Sunrise followed by sunset.

But when a choice had to be made – a choice between London and his marriage – a choice between Sherlock and Mary – he had moved to the country cottage, closer to Oxford than London, found a new job, and in the three years they had there, before Mary died so suddenly, had trained himself to be happy with what he had and not resentful of what he did not. He slept through the sunrise, contented himself with the peaceful sunset.

Sherlock pretended to understand, but having friends – being a friend – was difficult for him in all cases and nearly impossible under Mary’s terms.

Sherlock would not force himself to tolerate Mary’s tolerance of him. And Mary’s tolerance of Sherlock was limited to spaces outside of London, away from grisly murders and intriguing criminal minds. Contained in cozy dinners in the cottage, or jovial evenings at a local pub or restaurant with talk of friends and family and garden flowers and politics and travels but not _work_ , never work.

No matter Sherlock’s work _was_ his life.

John had ample proof that Sherlock Holmes did not separate the two.

For three years – for four years, really, when this last year without her was included – John and Sherlock had communicated almost entirely by text messaging.

While Mary was alive, his mobile had been set to stealth mode with Sherlock’s number. The only alert was a flash of the screen. As much as he honoured Mary’s demand that he stay out of trouble – _stay away from Sherlock –_ he could not, would not, give up this last small thing between them. He’d set his mobile back to vibrate the day after the funeral. He’d reach for it on his bed stand at three in the morning when he heard it rattle on the wood, never quite sure if the sound woke him or if he was not quite asleep anyway.

Occasionally, he’d text Sherlock first. _Read about that art forgery case in the Times. You were brilliant._

Sherlock’s responses never acknowledged John’s compliments.

_Mrs. Hudson fell and broke her ankle. She misses having a doctor in the house._

Oblique invitations. He never _asked_ John to come back.

He put the cottage up for sale a week after the anniversary of Mary’s death. The following weekend, John took the train in to London.

He paid the cabbie at the curb, just outside 221B. If Sherlock wasn’t home, he’d have a visit with Mrs. Hudson and check up on that ankle. Indulge in some of her shortbread biscuits. She’d have plenty to tell him, he knew, and if she gave him that familiar, pitying look he’d seen so often this year, he’d at least know it was heartfelt.

He stepped up to the door, took a breath, knocked. His phone vibrated almost immediately.

_The key?_

John stared at the phone then slowly looked up. Sherlock was standing in the window above the street.

He reached for his wallet and took out the key, held it up. Sherlock lifted a hand then stepped back from the window.

/

Nothing had changed and everything had changed.

John was reminded of the flat as he’d first seen it, though the clutter he’d worked so hard to contain had expanded vertically.

The furniture was the same furniture, arranged as it always had been. Mrs. Hudson had preserved everything as is while Sherlock was gone and thought dead, doubtless because Mycroft paid her to do so. John had cleared out his things two weeks after Sherlock’s funeral. He’d wager good money that they bed was still made up with the starched white sheets with crisp hospital corners, just as he’d left it, everything coated in eight years of dust.

John’s chair was still solidly there, oddly free of clutter. It faced the telly, which looked ancient and neglected. He swiped his hand over the screen and stared at his fingers, then over at Sherlock, ready with a question.

“You are wondering why the dust on your hand is yellowed from tar and nicotine, but the flat doesn’t reek of cigarettes. I’ve quit. A year ago, actually. Tea?”

Sherlock was leaning against the table. His laptop was open, his mobile plugged into it to charge. John could see the National Rail site open to the timetables.

“Yes. Tea would be nice.”

He watched Sherlock turn on the kettle and move an already prepared tea tray from the counter to the table. John eyed the plate of shortbread biscuits, realizing that Sherlock, amazing, brilliant Sherlock had _known_ he was coming. He let his eyes drift around the flat.

_Everything_ was familiar. The play of sunlight on the floor, the muffled sounds from the street, the old, herbal smell warring with the hint of something slightly _off_ from a forgotten or buried experiment.

“You were expecting me.”

Sherlock looked over at him. “Of course.” He glanced at his laptop. “I thought you’d be on the earlier train, actually.”

John blinked. “I bumped into someone on the way to the station.” He fumbled a bit. “The vicar. Missed the early train by five minutes.” He closed his eyes a moment as he settled onto his chair, remembering its comfortable contours even after all these years. “But why were you expecting me _today_?”

“I’m sure you know.”

John thought Sherlock looked completely out of kilter in the kitchen, regarding the tea tray and waiting for the kettle to boil. Sherlock Holmes was not given to social niceties and scenes of domestic tranquility. He was _trying_. For John.

John’s hands rubbed figure eights on the wide arms of the chair. “It’s been a year now?” he tried.

Sherlock was regarding him with unveiled interest. “Tuesday before last,” he said.

“But wouldn’t you think I’d have called first? At least sent a text to be sure you’d be here?”

“If I’d not answered, you’d have rung up Mrs. Hudson and visited her instead, learned everything there is to know about me, and told her to give me your regards, seeing as you were only in London for a few hours to take care of some business. I’d suggest you were hoping for that outcome, actually, at least this first trip in. It’s far easier to test the waters without the sharks swimming about.”

John smiled. It was senseless to deny the truth of the statement.

“You didn’t respond to my text on Tuesday.” Sherlock shrugged. “You needed to come here yourself to see if the room still suited you.”

“Still suited me? What have you done to it? Put up frilly curtains?” John’s eyes were closed again. The chair was brilliant. Perhaps the cure to his insomnia did not involve pharmaceuticals after all.

“What do you suppose I’ve done to it?” asked Sherlock.

John sighed. “Not a thing.”

The kettle was whistling and John enjoyed a protracted period of near silence, broken only by the sounds of pouring water and rattling cups and spoons.

“Open your eyes, John. I’m not going to balance a mug of hot tea on your stomach.”

John opened his eyes and accepted both the mug of tea and the plate of shortbread from a Sherlock Holmes who looked exceedingly awkward in this odd role reversal.

“You gave notice at the clinic last Friday and put your cottage on the market Monday. It really wasn’t too difficult to guess.”

John raised an eyebrow. Sherlock had pulled a kitchen chair over and was straddling it, facing him. “I gave the cat to Mary’s niece on Tuesday.”

Sherlock smiled. “And had your teeth cleaned on Thursday.”

“Shoddy investigative work, Sherlock. Had a filling, actually.”

They stared at each other then, communicating much as they had that day six years ago, two weeks after he had proposed to Mary, a week after Mycroft had come to tell him that Sherlock was alive, five seconds after John had opened the door to the flat he shared with Mary, Mary standing several steps behind him, conveying the heartbreak with his eyes. _I’ve moved on._ Moved on…moved on.

Sherlock was the first to speak.

“It wasn’t the vicar, John. It was Mary’s mother and you almost turned back.”

John held his mug with both hands and took a tentative sip. He lowered the mug and looked down into it. He didn’t bother to ask how Sherlock knew. He was right. It had been Mary’s mother. He _had_ almost turned back.

“I’m sorry, John. I thought I’d given you enough space – enough time.”

John shook his head. “No – no. It’s not that.” He was an idiot not to have seen. Not to have known. Not to have realized that he had a place here. That he _always_ had a place here. That he could have come back here months ago, escaped the cottage and Mary’s family and Mary’s friends and the rose garden and the invitations to dinner and the sad, pitying looks and the endless sleepless nights of _if onlys._

_If only I hadn’t been called in to work that morning._

_If only she’d been wearing gloves._

_If only we hadn’t left London._

The _what ifs_ were even worse, rising up from the deepest of restless nights when the darkest guilt could not be buried.

_What if I’d waited two weeks longer to propose?_

_What if Sherlock hadn’t fallen?_

It was no coincidence that Sherlock had quit smoking a year ago.

John regarded Sherlock now, looked at him with the eyes of a man who’d come to a crossroads and had chosen a direction.

“I’ll take the room.”

Sherlock’s face softened in what John realized was relief. He held up his mug with a comfortable air of familiarity that wrapped around John’s healing heart.

“To new beginnings,” he said, leaning forward and clinking his mug against John’s.

“New beginnings,” echoed John, wondering if Sherlock had _ever_ before initiated a toast.

And if his eyes held hope as they held Sherlock’s, if there was any suggestion of something more in what Sherlock had said, it was because each was remembering exactly where they’d left off.

Desperate, panic-filled, angry. That last day. The day it ended. Sherlock holding the lapels of John’s jacket, cloth bunched in his white-knuckled hands, John against the wall at the bottom of the stairs, hands gripping Sherlock’s coat. The end of a shouting match, John’s entreaties ignored.

A first kiss, an only kiss.

Sherlock not himself. Never himself again.

Not until now, with John back in London, back at 221B, back in his chair, tea in his hand. Not saying much. Looking slightly disapproving of the disorder, but more than slightly approving of the tea and shortbread biscuits.

John, ready to stay up past sunset and prowl through alleys in the dark or dash through London alight with street lights and traffic lights and headlights and the tails of Sherlock’s coat flying before him.

John, asleep now, in _his_ chair.

Sherlock takes his mug but leaves the crumbs on his shirt.

Mary might have brushed them off. Covered him with a blanket, unlaced his shoes, put slippers on his feet.

Planted a kiss on the side of his mouth, ruffled his hair. _Oh, John. Look at you. Asleep in the middle of the day again._

Sherlock watches tension leave John’s face, watches his hands relax, counts the slow and even breaths for a minute, no more, then sits back down in front of his laptop.

And goes about his day.


End file.
